Hacker News: mhss

New comment by mhss in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

mhss — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:55:24 +0000

Not at all. Most people can be super happy with less than the average tech salary (at a point where they don't feel they need more if it comes at the expense of work life balance, time with family, job satisfaction, etc).

New comment by mhss in "What makes you senior"

mhss — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 03:58:03 +0000

A junior or "mid" who doesn't take guidance repeatedly should likely be managed out.

It's perfectly fine remain "mid" (not junior IMHO) but is not ok to ignore guidance and advice from more experienced team members.

New comment by mhss in "I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself"

mhss — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 02:48:24 +0000

It's funny cuz is true. Except it'd probably be one long design doc with 10 rounds of review, 15 CLs (PRs) and months of rollouts later ... fails A/B due to declining user engagement.

New comment by mhss in "Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure"

mhss — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:37:52 +0000

Yes. Once is available more widely to common car owners (either from Waymo or others) that would interest me. Current Tesla supervised style semi autonomous driving I would find either boring or stressful (depending on the scenario). I would rather drive myself.

Note Waymo announced a partnership with Toyota, pretty hand wavy, but at least it seems there’s hope the technology may come to regular car owners at some point.

New comment by mhss in "Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure"

mhss — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 02:40:23 +0000

Quite frankly sounds super boring. I prefer driving than supervising. Only true unsupervised autonomous driving would be interesting for me (e.g Waymo).

New comment by mhss in "Sell yourself, sell your work"

mhss — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 16:05:12 +0000

> What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger?

Not all advice is applicable to everyone. It's up to you to decide if you can and want to follow it. The advice was for young programmers and it is solid advice, but again, not applicable to everyone. It is applicable to a majority (probably even large majority). If you are young and earning a sw engineer salary it is very rare to not be able to cover your basic needs and have something left. Most people spends what is left in luxuries, lifestyle creep, etc; which is what the advice is trying to warn people about.

New comment by mhss in "Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP (2015)"

mhss — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 02:36:22 +0000

Do you mind sharing what big tech company? I've worked at both small companies and big tech. Managers do not have full control, but they can influence very significantly comp and evaluations. If your manager isn't doing it then it is a performance problem.

New comment by mhss in "Httptap: View HTTP/HTTPS requests made by any Linux program"

mhss — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 14:40:34 +0000

My understanding is that the definition of cult requires a common object of devotion. What's that object of devotion for "society"? it's too large and diverse of a group to categorize it as such IMHO. I agree however that sometimes people will categorize anything strongly deviating from the norm as cult-ish.

New comment by mhss in "Engineering managers should not exist"

mhss — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 02:14:35 +0000

Engineering managers should not exist? I agree in an ideal world they shouldn’t. Ideally all teams should self-organize in harmony and dance barefoot singing kumbaya forming a perfect holacracy. Alas, we don’t live in an ideal world, and some people like me decided is a problem worth working on even if we don’t enjoy it as much as writing code.

New comment by mhss in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

mhss — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 02:16:14 +0000

It's the lack of content availability that pushed them over the edge. Sports are a special case, notoriously hard that is super stupid and pushing people to piracy. I tried paying many times to watch a game my kid wanted and either the dumb apps or websites would not work on my TV. Make it easy to pay for the content and most people will take the easy route rather than search online for ad-ridded or dubious websites (unless they can't really afford it and then is not a real loss for the company anyway).

New comment by mhss in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

mhss — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 02:12:18 +0000

People that cannot afford Netflix will go to great lengths to get the content they want. They're also not mutually exclusive. Piracy growing doesn't mean Netflix isn't. People pay for Netflix AND download pirated movies all the time.

New comment by mhss in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

mhss — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 02:11:07 +0000

My comment was explicitly replying to an argument about how streaming services would "suffer" because of how piracy is much easier today. There's no signs of that. Just because Netflix mentions that risk in their SEC filings. The article admits as much, it's their responsibility and of course if there were no other alternatives it'd be better for Netflix, but is hardly something that has changed significantly to make a dent in their business. As I said, subscriptions and revenue keeps growing, there's no evidence of them "suffering" because of the alternative (viable to many) that piracy provides.

New comment by mhss in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

mhss — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 02:08:00 +0000

Yeah, still, it's easier, but not as easy nor convenient or widely available (e.g there's no Popcorn app in that TV you just bought. Defaults matter a lot.

New comment by mhss in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

mhss — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 01:52:53 +0000

> Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc).

I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing (and subscribers), despite the "crackdown" on password sharing that many predicted would cause massive cancellations.

New comment by mhss in "Act II of Arc Browser [video]"

mhss — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 15:52:57 +0000

Reminded me of tables.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ4CuJm_lws

Our Open Salary System

mhss — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 16:42:09 +0000

Article URL: https://buffer.com/resources/salary-system/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39157027

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by mhss in "Balancing engineering cultures: Debate everything vs. just tell me what to build"

mhss — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 03:39:40 +0000

Debating is another form of waiting. You're not waiting to be told, but you're waiting to reach consensus. As long as the decision makers have bias for action you won't get caught up in either debating endlessly or waiting to be told what to do. Finding out how long to "wait" in either incarnation is only learned through experience IMHO, using general principles such as "one way" vs "two way" doors, etc.

New comment by mhss in "Adult ADHD Is the Wild West of Psychiatry"

mhss — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 17:33:31 +0000

Yes. I think is key to re-assess assumptions about what a job or role profile "should be" and make the requirements and expectations flexible to make room for those differences.

New comment by mhss in "Adult ADHD Is the Wild West of Psychiatry"

mhss — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 16:41:59 +0000

Thank you for writing this. I have young family members with ADHD and I really hope they can find the help they need as you did.

New comment by mhss in "Adult ADHD Is the Wild West of Psychiatry"

mhss — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 16:36:59 +0000

> He loved research and got a PhD, but couldn't do the tasks that were expected of a professor and ended up not getting tenure. After that he struggled to hold a job for most of my childhood.

This sounds horrific for both the individuals and their families. Talented individuals with so much to offer not finding their place.

> He would have thrived in the more Wild West academia of Isaac Newton and John Locke.

Yes, I agree. I just don't know how to create a system where the strengths of such individuals are leveraged. If an organization of 100 people is trying to build a bridge and the tasks required are challenging for the 1-5 ADHD individuals in the group, the persons will struggle and the organization will struggle. Both individuals and organizations need to get better at routing those individuals to the right places to leverage their strengths. This is true of anyone but 10x more important for ADHD or other disabilities.

> The things he struggled to do were the accidental complexities of the job of professor, not the truly important aspects of that role.

I have mixed feelings about this because sometimes I have heard people dismiss aspects of work they're not good at as not important. E.g I have had sw engineers claim they solved the problem in their head and writing it down and communicating it to others is not important. At large organizations is just as important unfortunately.